July 09, 2010

Social Media Making Its Way to Higher Ed: Changing the way students and teachers will create, consume, and interact with curricular content

If you are over 30, you probably remember the experience of education involving books, in-class lectures, study groups in the library, and long TA sessions. Today's higher ed is a completely different ball game. From live video lectures by overseas professors, to lecture delivered on mobile phone, to online registration, tests, and grading, and to distance learning--students and faculty today can have a completely different experience. And while still in infancy, we are embarking on a revolutionary change in the higher ed sector not unlike, and propelled by, the socio-digital revolution we've been experiencing in the past five years.

This week, a number of key announcements in the Education sector shine an even brighter light on the monumental changes ahead.

On Wednesday, Blackboard--a learning management system for higher ed and the major player in this sector--announced it has acquired Wimba and Elluminate. Until now, the Blackboard learning management system focused on asynchronous learning--essentially enabling access and consumption of content any time outside the classroom on demand. With the evolving needs of students to consume content anywhere, at anytime, real time, Blackboard's acquisition of Wimba and Elluminate gets it closer to doing just that.

Also this week, Kaltura announced the release of its Building Block for Blackboard. Kaltura is a current Ustrategy client and its founders are personal friends so I will stay brief on this front: Kaltura is the only open source rich media management platform with an emphasis on the education sector. Kaltura provides curricular media solution for faculty and students that enables them to use video in courses, to do synchronous slide presentation in video, rich media assignments, as well as provides a media middle-layer that connects media products and applications across multiple devices, formats, and in HTML5 (which solves Flash consumption issues on iPhone and iPad). You can see more on the Kaltura website.

Going back to the article I wrote in December of 2009, predicting how Social Media will change in 2010, the Blackboard acquisition and rapid adoption of alike solutions in education are a strong signal that social media is evolving and moving into new domains. Rich media, combined with the expectation of socio-digital freedom, are dictating a completely new way of learning. And while some criticize the merger, stating blackboard isn't performing to satisfaction and raising concerns of customer implications--as in any innovation and change management, I predict this too shall pass and education will continue to evolve, matching itself better with the way students and faculty--people--learn, interact, and behave in today's world.

You can read more about the implications of the acquisition to higher ed in this post, written by major higher ed blogger Josh Kim as well as the WSJ online report.